


Blood Red in the Snow

by K_Popsicle



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Captivity, Dark Rey (Star Wars), Dark Reylo, F/M, First Time, Hypothermia, I Think I Broke Rey, Jedi Temple (Star Wars), Murderous Kylo Ren, No Rape/Non-con, Snow, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, honor bondage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:21:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24387397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/K_Popsicle/pseuds/K_Popsicle
Summary: Rey hunts down Kylo Ren in the ruins of a Jedi Temple and gets caught by the First Order.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 19
Kudos: 57
Collections: Writing Rainbow Make Up Round, Writing Rainbow Red





	Blood Red in the Snow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [syrupwit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/syrupwit/gifts).



The air is cold and bites at her bare face. For a girl that grew up with water as a luxury, snow is a breathtaking extravagance. But it’s also cold. She tightens the winter jacket she found in the Falcon’s hold right before Chewie touched down just long enough for her to disembark. If Kylo Ren is here she plans to give him as little warning as possible, and the Falcon would be a little less than subtle.

She rubs at her arms, raises her hand to shield her face and pushes into the wind determined to succeed this time.

Kylo Ren has evaded her since their confrontation on the Supremacy, crowded by the First Order, leading invasions against rebellious planets, and always gone before she arrives. In his wake he leaves only the scorched remains of his presence. Her desperation has grown past reasonable. Leia has tried to caution her, the Resistance has tried to distract her, but none of them can see. None of them understand that Ben Solo still needs to be saved, and she’s the only one who can do it.

Coming to Tartunn, a backwater planet at the edge of nowhere, is a shot in the dark. The Resistance has been too slow to cut him off at the pass, too busy reacting to anticipate, so she’s taken matters into her own hands.

Kylo Ren is her problem anyway, he’s made himself her problem. The way he echoed in her mind with fits and starts even after Snoke’s death has made him her problem. The way she can think of nothing else has made him her problem. But that also makes her _know_ they could be better, _he_ could be better, know they could be _more_ if he would just stop evading her.

The trail of destruction she followed to this small offshoot world _felt_ like Kylo Ren in her gut, in her core, and so she followed. Settlements decimated with no survivors, lightsaber fissures and blaster fire all told their own story. So she knew after the first that she was _close_ , and she pushed on to the next and the next after that until they blurred into one long chase of fire and death.

Tartunn’s bitter winds stir up ice and snow that stings her face as she makes her way through the rocky crags. Her fingers grip the icy rocks as she climbs, and the skin catches and pulls like the ice will never let her go. She pushes on up worn stairs and along narrow crumbling pathways, the world dropping below her into a storm of snow so thick she can’t see the bottom. It doesn’t matter. There’s only one direction now, and that’s up towards Kylo Ren.

The ancient ruins, when she reaches the gates, stretch out into the hollow of the mountain top. Tilted pillars, fallen walls, statues of aliens long extinct all scatter across the abandoned temple grounds. The storm swallows the far reaches like a drawn curtain, but she can see the outline of monolithic domes that have yet to give way to time. The Force pulses from within the ground. She’s been able to feel it since she reached the mountain, but here it’s focused.

There’s no sign of life, no sign of the First Order, but she knows this place, saw it in her dreams the night before. She pushes on searching for _him_.

She’s brushing the ice crystals forming on her fringe, the wind deafening as it howls past, when she’s hit from behind.

Rey regains consciousness cold and cut off from the Force. There’s the sound of laughter nearby, and she opens her eyes to a blaster aimed between them. “Nice,” she mocks, and the man – though it’s hard to tell their gender under the plate metal mask and all the black – shoots the rock beside her ear. Rey flinches to the side. Shards of rock splinter and slice the side of her face, but she doesn’t cower, her glare as fierce as the anger boiling inside her.

He’s sitting splay-legged on a small crate out of her reach, a slant to his shoulders like he’s relaxed, and she’s tied up on compacted ice.

“Those,” he gestures at the ties binding her wrist and ankles with his blaster, “are what we used on the princess when we bought him in the first time.” This is one of Ren’s Knights, she realises, and behind him, through the snow, she can see a cluster of First Order troopers and more of them sitting around a thermal heater. “You’ll find they’re still just as efficient at restraining a brat.” He stands up, moves towards her, and she steels herself and holds her ground. He kicks her in the ribs, then in the back of the thigh when she’s on the ground. She expects it, but she doesn’t expect the queasy feeling that bubbles in the base of her stomach at being so easily put down. She almost believed that part of her life had passed. “If you want the heater,” he says instead of kicking her again, “you’ll have to beg. Maybe with your mouth.” His laugh is full bellied as he leaves her alone, and Rey hears the troopers around the heater laugh along with him.

She sits up, feels the bile creeping up her throat and forces it down. They’ve left her alone and it’s her only comfort. Their camp is crates and tarps strung up under a large slab of temple that’s cropped up like a massive stone roof. It’s sheltered, and warm, and she can smell meat cooking. None of that makes her forget that it is the last place she wants to be right now. Compared to them she’s exposed on three sides. Her jacket’s been taken away, so has her lightsaber, and they’ve driven a spike through icy rock and tethered her to it with the straps around her wrists. There is no shelter, only open ground. She tugs at her restraints and tests their strength but they don’t budge and she can’t move.

As the snow drifts down and settles on her, her body starts to cool.

“He’ll kill you,” she grits through the chatter of her teeth. Her body’s shaking hard, trying to generate the heat she needs, but she won’t say yes.

“He’ll probably thank us.” Another of the Knights, one with detonators at his shoulder, _reaches for her_. She pulls back hard, avoids contact, and bares her teeth ready to bite. The cold air stings her gums. He doesn’t chase her but she’s expecting it. She knows it’s coming. They keep looking at her, building tension and lingering attention. “Doesn’t really matter,” he drawls. “You’ll pass out eventually anyway.”

More of the troops are watching her when the Knight walks away, some of them standing, but they all settle back down when he returns without a prize.

She doesn’t care why they’re even asking when they can just take, as long as it gives her time. Rey wraps her numb fingers around the spike and doesn’t even feel the cuts as she tries to dig the thing out.

The third one to approach squats down opposite her, his hands hanging between his knees as he looks her over. He’s got blinders, or something, on his helmet.

“Getting kind of cold, don’t you think?” he asks like they’re _friends_. The sun has come out, burnt the clouds away and Rey thinks it’s colder now, but it’s hard to tell because cold is cold is cold and the shaking's starting to subside so maybe it’s not cold at all.

“I’ve had worse,” she wants to spit, but her voice comes out shaky instead. Breathing is getting harder but she isn’t sure why.

He strikes faster than she can escape, fingers clasping her chin and squeezing. She tries to throw her head out of his grip but he holds fast. He forces her to look into his mask. “You know we don’t have to wait. Some of the guys think it’ll be funny if you’re dead when he gets back. Solves a whole bunch of problems from our end. But me?” She can hear his slimy smile. “I like a pretty girl when I see one. I like her more when she’s in her place.”

Her breaths judder out but she has no more to say, not to these kinds of monsters. She looks past his shoulder rather than at his stupid mask.

“Sorry boys,” he calls to the group fingers squeezing painfully, “looks like Ap’lek called it.” To her he sneers and says, “That just means he’ll be first, but don’t worry. There’s an order to everything and nobody gets left out.”

He pushes her head away, walks back to the camp, and she tries to keep breathing.

Kylo Ren’s in the middle of things when he feels Rey disappear. He nearly overbalances on the edge of a chasm but punches through the rock face to hold on. He breathes in the stale temple air, waits for his racing pulse to calm, and reaches out with the Force for Rey. Nothing comes back to him.

His heart picks up again. He’s been in the maze-like temple for four days, he’s gone down wrong paths, been turned around, double backed and had to do it all over again. There are _traps_ and he’s going to have to pass them all again to get out empty handed. He could push on – he _should_ push on – but his heart won’t calm down, and he can’t _feel_ Rey.

She’s dead, or she’s caught. She could be anywhere, and now that he’s been to the temple, scavengers will follow. Anything of value will be gone if he leaves now.

He changes direction. The choice isn’t a choice. She’s dead, or she's caught. Either way he’ll find out.

Rey wakes with a start, then jolts with a surge of fear. Her hands are still bound, the sun is still up, she’s still tied to her stake, and there’s a Knight of Ren half way towards her.

“Get back,” she shouts. She’s scared, choking on it, but she’ll fight with everything she has even if it’s nothing.

“Ah come on,” the Knight whines, “it’s getting boring over here.”

“Get back,” she warns, but she’s got nothing, nothing at all to hold over them, only the sick game they’ve been playing with her from the start. All of the men are watching her, some of them have taken their helmets off, and she won’t survive what they’ll do. She won’t.

He steps closer, and is flung backwards.

She still can’t feel the Force.

Red ignites next to her, and hope burns her.

“She said,” Ben says, deadly and low, “get back.”

The camp makes an uproar but she can’t turn her eyes from Ben. He’s panting and furious, braced for a fight, lightsaber at the ready, hand extended from throwing the Knight but he’s looking at her, cataloguing her with quick fire attention and she knows he cares, knows he’s never ever going to hurt her. Not like they were – not like this.

Something in her drops. Fear becomes nothing, because there is nothing to be afraid of, and all she’s left with is anger. She says with surety, “Kill them.”

His eyes widen, his body shifts as if to go to her and she says louder, fiercer, “Kill them, Ben!”

And he does.

Rey’s never watched a massacre up close. Rey’s never wanted people to die the way she wants right now. And Ben is spectacular and powerful. The world is soft at the edges, breathing is hard, but she can’t look away.

Ben has the closest Knight dead before they realise he’s doing it, and then the melee unleashes. Few of them have their weapons on them, and those that do get knocked back with broad sweeps of the Force while Ben deals with the closer problems. He culls their numbers before one of the big Knights puts up a proper fight, and even that isn’t much of a fight. Three quick moves, practiced, controlled, and the Knight hits the ground like a rag doll. The rest fall just as easily, amateurs to his destruction. And he keeps moving until every last one is in pieces on the ground.

Then he turns to her, breath clouding with every huff of air. He is murder and fury, and he unbinds her hands and ankles with tender caution. She feels the Force flood back into her, feels him slot back into place in her center where he’s been for so long.

“You’re cold,” he says, stupidly, and then his cape is laid over her shoulders, warm from his body and shielding her from the wind. She wraps her arms around his shoulder, curls herself into his chest and feels his hesitant arms settle around her.

“You came,” she breathes, and his breath is ragged as he gathers her up and carries her into the shelter.

It smells like burnt meat, blaster fire and filth, and he rolls a body aside with his boot to make a clear space near the thermal heater for her. Then gently, like she’ll shatter if he’s not, he lays her down. His thumb smooths over her cheek and down her throat, parting the cape he just bundled her into, pushing it aside so he can see her. She stares at him, curious, but trusts him implicitly.

“Your clothes are wet.” His voice is gravel, cautious. “I need to take them off.”

“Anything,” she agrees. She wraps her pale fingers around the thick wrist hoving over her belly and says, “Keep me warm, Ben.”

His eyes jump to meet hers, and the raw want there would take her breath away if she had any to spare. It fills her to the brim and overflowing, with gratitude, and love. And he kisses her, leans over her body and presses warm lips to her cold ones. It’s chaste, she wants more, but he pulls back. Carefully he peels her clothes away, gloved fingers lingering on her frozen skin leaving burnt lines of sensation. She closes her eyes to to trace them with her mind, the catch of fine stitches on goosebumps, the butter soft leather as he traces the curve of her breast, his fingers curving down her hips then tracing down the length of her legs as he takes off her last protections. Then with just as much attention he pulls his cape over her exposed body, wrapping it tight, tucking it in, before he lifts her into the vee of his legs and folds himself around her.

His breathing is wrecked, almost as desperate as her own and she lays her head against his chest and listens to the rapid thump of his heartbeat.

Her eyes drift closed and she jerks awake, her fingers cling in the front of his robes tunic in a burst of panic.

“If more of them come-“

“I’ll kill them,” he assures easily, and the arms holding her tighten, fingers digging in to leave their own bruises.

“Good,” she breathes against his throat and between one breath and another she falls asleep.

Rey wakes warm, surrounded by the rich smell of Kylo Ren. She hadn’t even realised she knew what he smelt like, but with each breath she draws more and more of it in and she knows she’d recognise this scent anywhere. There’s ash and sweat, and something spicy and it makes parts of her quiver.

“You’re awake,” he starts, and she untangles herself from his cape, letting it drop onto the ground around her. The cold air touches her bare skin but she makes no move to cover herself.

They’re still in the shelter. The bodies of his men are scattered across the camp floor, kicked away from where she’s sitting in an inelegant pile. Those further from the thermal heater have started to freeze. A storm has picked up again, outside blanketed in white, but inside feels warm and comfortable.

He approaches her deliberately, and she sits straighter so nothing is hidden. “Drink this, slowly.” He holds out a steaming mug, and it smells sweet and warm so she takes it and does as she’s told. He watches her face the whole time and she starts to feel cold, but not enough that she pulls the cape back up over her shoulders.

When every sip is gone, and only then, she sets the mug aside then says, “Come here,” and he obeys. He kisses her first and this time his lips are cold. She puts her hands on his tunic and it’s cool to the touch as well. Cooler than it should be.

“You’re cold. Where have you been?” She pulls back to ask.

He looks cautious but says, “There was another camp. I wanted to be thorough.”

She weighs that within herself, the spike of adrenaline, the fear of _what if _, the knowledge that he left her – stalked across the frozen temple grounds and – “Are they dead?”__

__  
_ _

“Every last one.” Relief and gratitude shoot through her, and something darker that crawls up her spine and bleeds through her every limb.

“Good,” she repeats, grabbing at him, pulling him to her, crushed cold leathers against her bare breasts and belly. He goes where she leads, kisses to match her ferocity, and devours every fear she’s ever dreamt of in the cold dark night.

Kylo Ren marvels at her above him. Furious passion he’d never hoped to see burning in her eyes as she pushes him down onto the ground, pulling at fastenings and belts, legs splayed over his hips, the heat of her pressing down hard against him. He takes his gloves off to feel her, needs to touch the flawless cream of her skin, needs to hold her as she rolls against him.

He catches her, fingers twisted in her hair, and pulls her back from his throat where her teeth have scraped and left marks. Her eyes are wild, fierce, and he holds her until there’s calm, until he knows she’s paying attention to more than just their bodies.

“You’ll stay with me?” Not really a question – a demand.

“Yes.” It is a promise.

“Forever,” he insists.

And she swears, “Yes,” with that same desperate fierceness, her hands on his bare shoulders, his chest, but she doesn’t move, holding still and waiting for his next demand. There are so many things he wants from her – so many things he wants.

“I won’t stop,” he warns her, goads her to pull away. But she doesn’t, she leans in to him with her expression open and willing and says, “I won’t make you.”

After that nothing else matters, only the way she moves, the way she holds him down, the way she clasps his wrists, strains over him to press them above his head, and tells him to stay and he does. He does because it’s for her. He does because she _wants_ him to and it is his pleasure to do whatever she needs and more.

When she slides him into her, when she splits herself open on him for the first time, her face pinches. She braces her arms against his chest and bares the pain with each rocking thrust. He meets her with his hips, but he doesn’t touch her, keeps his wrists where she put them even when he wants to take her, hold her, show her how to move so the pinched look fades away faster. But he knows there’s time for that later. It keeps him compliant.

She finds the angle herself eventually, learns how to make her body light up and takes what she wants from him. But it doesn’t matter, he’s willing to give. She builds them up, mouths at his chest where her head hangs under a curtain of her hair as she works them both to oblivion, squeezing and soft around him until he’s on the precipice, gripping his hands together hard enough to bruise so he won't disobey her and pushing his hips up into her smaller frame in a broken, desperate rhythm. He groans out his release into the crown of her head, and she makes a surprised squeak of a noise and tumbles after him. The pulse of her wrings the last pleasure out of him and he doesn’t move, lets her body sag down onto his, damp with sweat and fever hot.

“You’ll get cold again,” he says when he gets his breath back, and she makes a little noise, rubs her nose against his chest and looks back at him with big bright eyes. He could watch the way her body rises and falls with inhale and exhale, lock it up so he can see it forever. But there’s snow outside, and they have time.

She looks at him thoughtfully, looks at his hands still above his head where she put them, and her smile curls wicked and sweet.

“Do you want to touch me?” she asks, blowing warm air against his throat.

“I want to get a blanket,” he replies, “but yes.”

Her smile sharps, drops, and she presses her face into his chest to hide her expression from him.

“I won't if you don’t want me to,” he promises stupidly, even though every part of him wants to break that promise straight away. But his reward is the way he can feel her smile against his skin, the way she says, “I know, but I want you to.”

Slowly, so as not to startle her, he reaches for the discarded cape and draws it over her shoulders. Then just as slowly he pulls her closer, tucks her head under his chin and feels the warmth of her, safe, alive, and now _his_.

Rey feels nothing when Ben leads an invasion force on Loktaro. He kisses the top of her head and tells her they’re all bounty hunters, scum, rotten to the core. “Bring me back a gift,” she insists and returns to repairing her lightsaber.

He brings her a fur lined cloak of the whitest snow. There’s blood on the trim. He wraps it around her, and kisses her softly, and she has never been as safe.

“I’ll go with you next time,” she promises, and he smiles like she’s offered him the universe. She doesn’t need to, though. They’ll take it in their own time.


End file.
